From my limited research and understanding, Nvidia makes Linux drivers, but they’re closed source. These work fine. They open sourced some stuff but not enough to really change much yet.
There are also FOSS drivers, but the performance for those vary.
Is this correct? Should I stick to proprietary drivers if I want consistent performance?
Pop! is a great choice. Most programs will default to flatpak in the software manager and there are a few potential pitfalls there because some of the default permissions are not very well thought out.
I would either avoid flatpak from the start (Pop! shop > hamburger > Software sources > flatpak > delete flathub source), or read up about it and flatseal before using.
What are flatpaks anyway? They seem to be portable versions of software but they’ve always been slow for me
I think they're just little container-mabobs that ship with all the dependencies. Like a windows exe but partially sandboxed. :shrug-outta-hecks: